“Masculin/Masculin” Exhibit In Paris Lays The Male Nude Bare

Masculin/Masculin, a revealing exhibition at Paris’ Musee d’Orsay, features some 200 paintings, photographs and sculptures that celebrate the male nude.

The nude female has been the subject of countless exhibits, but this is the first time the male gaze has been turned back on itself. It’s about time: Thanks to Calvin Klein and Madison Avenue, society has warmed to the idea of objectifying, deifying and commodifying men’s bodies. The mainstreaming of gay-male culture helped too. “One of our themes is the homoerotic,” Musee d’Orsay president Guy Cogeval tells The Local. “It is a thread throughout the exhibition.”

Naked guys are all the rage in the art world, apparently: a similar show in Vienna, titled “Nude Men,” drew crowds—and complaints.

It is highly significant that until the show at the Leopold Museum in Vienna in the autumn of 2012, no exhibition had opted to take a fresh approach, over a long historical perspective, to the representation of the male nude. However, male nudity was for a long time, from the 17th to 19th centuries, the basis of traditional Academic art training and a key element in Western creative art.

Artists represented in “Masculin/Masculin,” which stretches back to 1800, include Rodin, Jacques Louis David, Pierre et Gilles, David LaChappelle and Paul Cadmus.